Reviewer:
BABatson
-
favoritefavoritefavoritefavoritefavorite -
August 9, 2009
Subject:
Swan Song of a Civilisation ?
Mature and beautiful -- the America which was "free, white and 21". She was ready to begin really doing something, rather than merely survuving as a bastard child of British, hence European and Western, Civilisation. But two world wars destroyed that; as H. J. Eckenrode wrote in his 'Jefferson Davis, President of The South' (concluding chapter, 'The Moral'): the future will be more comfortable and secure; there will be less excellence, but also less danger; the leveling forces of democracy will force down the creative spirit and chain it, but the chains will be light and within their bounds, comfortable.
Moon River is a programme which is the last of Western Civilisation, like 'the last train' in Damon Knight's short story of that name: '"When's the next train, Station Master? There is none, replied the uniformed clerk." "No," exclaimed the weary traveler irritably; "Is it tomeorrow morning, tomorrow night, in the afternoon; when is it, I ask you?!" Station Master turned like the dancers in one of the ancient European town hall public clocks of bygone centuries, to face the stranger in the dim light of the shade-less overhead hanging bulb, a bulb of the old days which evidently had been stored in crates, purchased all at once by some forward looking materiele administrator, the kind which had no frosting but was clear, if of low wattage: "You do not understand, Sir; that was the last train ... The Last Train"'
Is that to be so for America and Western Civilisation in the crashing decline of one or two generations? All I know is that here, at 'Moon River', everything yields -- to lovely sleep!